Whichever way you examine it, Marvel’s television output is a poor cousin. In cinemas, Marvel has perfected the blueprint for incredibly expensive, toweringly magisterial, high-sheen soapy fun. The same cannot be said for its small-screen fare.

Netflix’s various Defenders off-shoots are dour and flabby. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has never been able to escape its reputation as connective tissue without connection. Inhumans was so dire that mankind appears to have already reached a tacit agreement to pretend that it never happened. New Warriors is lost in limbo without a network. The whole thing is disappointing and small-scale. With one exception.

Legion. Noah Hawley’s extremely tangential X-Men spin-off finished its second series on FX last week in the US, and wraps up in the UK this coming Monday. By all accounts it’s a doozy. At least, I think it’s a doozy. It certainly looked very nice, and the performances were all terrific. As for what actually happened in it? That’s less clear.

Legion is a kaleidoscope. Its tone is always playful, and it drips with invention

I know the broad strokes. There was a hero and a monster, and a giant plughole in the desert. There was definitely a dance-off featuring one of Flight of the Conchords, and some of the characters introduced this year can only be described as androgynous, Autotuned 118 men. From what I have been able to tell, the final episode ends on such a dark note that it deserves any Breaking Bad comparisons it receives. But pin me down and interrogate me on the specifics of any given episode, and you’d get nothing.

Because Legion’s storytelling is so opaque and fragmented – with various dimensions and timelines at play, some of which are real and some of which are imagined – that trying to piece it together into a cohesive whole is almost impossible. Legion is not a programme inclined to hold your hand. It’s a flurry of images and noises that leap about according to their own whims. It’s a tidal wave full of broken masonry, and viewers have the choice of dissecting it in immense detail or simply letting it wash over them. Legion demands either all of your attention or none of it. Fall anywhere between those poles and you’ll drown.

Shock and gore: Legion is a close cousin of the always confusing Westworld. Photograph: HBO

As Sean O’Neal recently pointed out on AV Club, Legion shares a core DNA with Westworld, in that both shows make hay of muddying their narratives to the obvious bafflement of their audiences. However, where Westworld is portentous and self-important, Legion is a kaleidoscope. Its tone is always playful, and it always drips with invention. If nothing else, it is gorgeous to look at.

Westworld finale recap: season 2, episode 10 – who will make it out alive?

Read more

It isn’t perfect, of course, and sometimes you find yourself yearning for some narrative directness. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the best and most moving episode of the series – Chapter 14 – was the one that stepped back from all the frantic pinwheeling to explore a character in a moment of grief. However, it also shouldn’t be a surprise that this episode took place within a shattered multiverse that drew heavily from quantum mechanics. Sometimes, it must be said, you’re desperate for Legion to get out of its own way.

But still – compared to the rest of Marvel’s television output – Legion stands alone. In a world of product, Legion feels like a statement. It feels like it’s the result of a definitive vision, rather than a corporate decision to fill gaps that didn’t need filling. Legion is its own thing, and it absolutely isn’t for everybody. But I miss it already, and I can’t wait for series three. I won’t be able to understand a single second of it, but that’s half the fun.